This blog is another piece on the connected lighting market. To see our previous articles on the connected lighting market refer to: 'With More LED Street Lights Comes More Connected Lighting,' 'Lighting Industry: 2014 in Review and What to Expect Next,' and 'Let's Talk Controls'.

At the least, this is an indication that inventories are now worked out of the supply chain. But, it's interesting that a lot of the news comes from one place: Taiwan.

Dominique Numakura of DKN Research Group notes several reasons for Taiwan's thaw in his recent newsletter
. First, it's based on two successful products that are emerging now, just as the recession hurts sales for just about everything else. Those products are the netbook computer and the smart phone. Another reason is that spillover of demand from mainland China's stimulus package has driven up demand for large screen TVs supplied from Taiwan. Numakura also suggests that Taiwan has a more urgent and proactive approach to the downturn, more aggressively seeking out opportunities than Japanese and American counterparts that take a more reactionary approach.

It helps to note too that the semiconductor downturn dates all the way to 2007 already, so improvement is well overdue.

Any thawing will be good news for anyone making optoelectronic chips for common appliances: things like image sensors, displays, LEDs, etc.

There is still plenty of bad news coming out every day. For example, iSuppli doesn't buy the hype
about a memory chip recovery, arguing that the supply will still exceed the growth in demand. And for the most part, the demand for fab tools and other manufacturing equipment remains frozen solid. But the chip demand has to improve before anything else can.